calamity

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we knew it.

we all knew that it definitely would come,

but no one knew when or where.

or, everyone could’ve blindly believed that it should not be “today” or “tomorrow”.

at last a devastating earthquake came on friday,

and a even more devastating tsunami followed.

watching live tv-news, 

i was associating a seaside town being struck by the great tsunami with,

not hokusai's woodblock print, but, to my surprise, venezia.

it was strangely slow, surreal, something like what happened in my dream.

anyway, another big quake could come any time, any place in japan.

we all japanese are still stunned by the unspeakable calamity.

we are grieving over the loss of every single family in the quake-hit zone

and realizing how great the hardship can be for us to endure.

i am truly grateful for all your compassion and help.

we are toughing it out,
we are good at overcoming adversities indeed.

you bet we will rebuild our country even better.

xxx

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london, and paris

hello

and thank you for dropping me a line,

my beautiful friends!

i finally sent my manuscript (for a book i translated) to my editor over the net a few days ago, i decided to do nothing for a while. i was shattered. in the mean time, i started thinking about fashion as this year’s catwalk season kicked off. i’m not really a fashion enthusiast, though. i just look forward to checking reports on fashion weeks. then, i found alexander mcqueen’s sad news yesterday. what a tragedy.

there were young and talented british designers who worked in paris, and then they moved back to london just like mcqueen. when i think of london and paris, i miss something that eventually almost disappeared from the both cities over the last two decades. it’s milliner. millinery is the most romantic item for fashion design, i believe. no matter how unpractical, millinery is lovely to look at. especially in catwalks, it plays the most fantastical role. mcqueen did excellent shows with it.

pic 1, 4 a milliner on the left bank, paris.
pic 2, 3 the hat shop in neal street, london.
all pics from films taken in the 90’s.


have a romatic weekend, girls (and boys)!!

biscuit tins

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this time, i’m going to talk about nothing to do with weather or floras. well, it’ true that the most enjoyable part of my life is associated with seasonal changes of nature. but, my artsy side seems never to be influenced by seasons or even bad weathers. (oh, it’s another fine summer’s day; ideal for an italian white wine here in osaka.) matter of fact, i’m pretty design-conscious. i can be fussy or crazy about colours, patterns and shapes of end products that some talented persons have created. for this reason, i have a tendency to fall for things that can be my collectibles.

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meanwhile, i tell my mother, who can’t throw anything away without feeling guilty, to stop accumulating rubbish. in her drawers and cupboard, i’ve been seeing a host of strings, rubber bands and shopping bags sit still over these years. i do understand that any woman of my mother’s generation experienced the times when anyone simply could not afford to waste anything because of the war. i, however, say to her mercilessly: “mother, do you really need a dozen of empty plastic yogurt tubs?” it’s no joke.

on the other hand, when it comes to pretty things like ribbons, boxes and biscuit (or tea, coffee, cocoa power?) tins, i am not in a position to tell my mother to get rid of that stuff. actually, i used to have way too many tins. i still keep some in spite of frequent relocations of my base crossing the seas, back and forth, in the past. my old biscuit tins all look ravishingly beautiful. in fact, years back, when i jumped off a double-decker i’d taken from piccadilly after shopping at fortnum & mason, i left my handbag. i was totally carried away with a gorgeous lazzaroni biscuit tin i’d just bought there. i know i’m sometimes such a comic. * **

pic 1
maker-unidentified french bonbons tin: i don’t really remember this … probably i bought this in london since the tin charmed me, while i clearly remember the bonbons were not so tasty. this tin now contains my sawing kit.

pic 2, 3
lazzaroni amaretti cookies tin: this is quite ubiqitous. i used to have all three sizes. the tall one is a perfect size for spaghetti. this spicy macaroon’s tissue wrapper is beautiful, too. design-wise, i prefer retro to modern, by the way.

pic 4
another lazzaroni biscuits tin: i eventually bought this after several visits to fortnum mason. this is the tin that cost me my handbag. several months later i received a letter from the london transport lost property office, telling me to collect my handbag. a good world? but, i had to pay for restoring charge.

pic 5
ladyfingers (french sponge type biscuits) tin: i think i bought this when i lived in 横浜 yokohama. i was going to make a charlotte with these biscuits, but i ate them all before making one. threads, buttons and beads are crammed in there now.

pic 6
末富 suetomi japanese biscuits tins: my new numbers. in my opinion, these minimalistic tins are the best designed confectionery tins in japan. 末富 suetomi, an well-established confectionery in 京都 kyoto, does have its own aesthetics not only for confectioneries but for packaging as well.

pic 7
(additionally) whiteman’s sampler box: i bought this in new york last year. it is not a tin as you see. and it is a bit girly, you might think. still, this nostalgic feel makes me so hard to throw away when empty.

have a beautiful sunday, everyone!
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versatile mint

mint sprigs are something i’m always glad to have. if you have some in your kitchen garden, they sure will come in handy when you add the finishing touch to drinks and desserts you prepare. like the fresh blueberries i had (they were also in the food parcel i posted last week), bright green mint leaves made it look gorgeous. as i froze some of them, i can enjoy a bowl of ice cream with frozen blueberries any time, adding a mint sprig of course. indeed, mint is very one of versatile herbs. as you know, i love using mint not only for garnishing but for cooking as well. naturally, mint is essential for me to grow amid my herbie babies.

on a hot afternoon especially in hot summer months, having hot mint tea works for me to chill out, really. i learned how to make proper mint tea when i travelled around morocco. in london, i could easily get a bunch of fresh mint and a small packet of gunpowder tea from ethnic north african grocers in kilburn high road. besides, baklavas were sold there. i’m now living in a suburb of osaka, you know. i make kind of “fusion” mint tea substituting japanese green tea for chinese gunpowder tea. what would i have instead of baklavas? i’d have some traditional sweets, 落雁 rakugan (made from beans and sugar) for example. japanese sweets surprisingly go with mint tea.

with summer winding down, people can’t help but get sentimental, can they. i am missing that short (and often cool) english summer right now… i just imagine myself sitting in a pub near hampstead heath sipping a glass of pimm's as the sun sets. in reality, i fancy a cocktail i can make myself – mojito? why not? -- so i stand up to fix. i think i have all the ingredients at home, by the way. as my local super market does not always have limes, I’ve got a small bottle of squeezed lime juice imported from turkey; i have enough fresh mint sprigs, while i now grudge even a drop of my havana club that i brought from cuba. accordingly, i’ve recently bought white rum from a local shop.



lemon is refreshing; has no season that i have fresh lemon juice all the year around. still, if fresh mint is added, it gets fresher. so i make minty citron pressé in summer. meanwhile, like other drinks i’ve named as above, citron pressé has a story to make me smile, too. years back, i had the most elegant one in the bar of hotel le bristol paris. the taste was the same, however. i was there to interview phebe philo, the creative director of chloé at the time. she suggested meeting there since the hotel was just a stone’s throw from her atelier. in fact, it’d been cancelled at the last minute once before and my client (a magazine) had gone panic. for me, it was so lucky to visit paris from london twice within a month.




pic 1
in the herb garden of my local park, mints are in bloom. what lovely flowers!
pic 2
plum little blueberries… picked, packed and delivered to me from 静岡 shizuoka. so fresh.
Pic 3
fusion mint tea with 落雁 rakugan from 小布施 obuse for summer afternoon tea.
pic 4
for mojito: white rum, lime juice, soda, a few sprigs of fresh mint, sugar and ice cubes.
pic 5
voilà. mini mojito for two. click here for recipe and i bet you’ll enjoy this cuban experience.
pic 6
my own citron pressé avec les rameaux de menthe served hot or iced. but i prefer brown sugar.
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paper chase

are you on holiday somewhere sunny? i am not going anywhere and have been thinking of a painting project – to paint dull and naff walls crisp white in my flat. so, when i took some interior books off the bookshelf for inspirations, i came across my old scrapbook, which i made during my “flower london” era when i was studying floristry at college and working as an apprentice for jane packer. the scrapbook, however, doesn’t suggest my then-obsession with flowers. it was paper, such as tickets, stamps and labels. you know, ubiquitous things you find in foreign countries, materials and colours are slightly different from ones you familiar with, which fascinate me a great deal.
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i’ve been prone to accumulate pretty little but trashy things like ribbons and wrapping paper since my childhood, anyway. you can call me a real scrap-maniac or a rag-picker. i simply could not throw them into a dust bin because i got hooked on the beautiful colours and textures of paper, let alone memorabilia like tickets of exhibitions and concerts i took my kids, or went by myself, on weekends or on holiday; postmarks on stamps reflect on how good i was in communication with my mother and friends from around the world. after all these years, i am still surprised at the supposedly big number of letters that they wrote me while living in london. i could treasure each of them in a form of a book for life.

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well, once upon a time, people bought stamps for sending letters and tickets for taking a bus and a train. In lieu of taking extra care not to lose those tiny pieces of paper, we text, email and use e-tickets for travel these days. it’s economical as well as ecologically better this way. wonderful designs can still remain in the virtual world. then again, i can’t help but feel like i am missing out on something sensuous more and more. my old scrapbook took me back to the good old days, apparently. apart from that, my scrapbook also includes my daughter’s drawing and scribbles as well as messages that i asked jane and my then-workmates to write when i was leaving london for tokyo. i rediscovered the warmth of handwriting, too.

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lock, canal, stables and rocking horses

each time i hear of the news about the recent recession in britain, i recall the time when business remained slack but people were as sturdy as their wellington boots in this country. my 1st london life, which i personally call my “london flower-period” (i was studying floristry then), happened from 1988 to 1991. at the time, we didn’t really have a great choice of places to go on dreary sundays in the cold months. due to the sunday trading act, shops were not allowed to trade on sundays. even oxford street was deserted, you couldn’t imagine that now. so i’d take my kids to museums. or, another choice was flea markets, which i now miss most about london.

it’s february. a year ago, i learned that a large fire broke out in the camden market area on an online newspaper. i wondered and worried how much had affected the markets, because camden lock used to be my playground. but yet, i know camden lock is not what it used to be. i witnessed it changing over time during the 2nd and 3rd spans of my london life that lasted until 2005. i miss my london days when people still clung onto victoriana. it was before they had chucked out their chintz, which was ikea’s infamous tv campaign encouraging britain to buy brand new things; it was before “cool britannia” was born and also it was before a celebrity culture was rather hysterically welcomed be the british.

the camden markets have always been considered a tourist trap. it’s probably true. in the late 80’s i saw punks and goths hanging around the tube station, who obviously attracted tourists. i simply enjoyed being an onlooker, though i kind of sensed young people’s dissatisfaction with their society and themselves, or whatever. but then, i knew that there was something nice to be found and i could be a finder if only i’d drive my rickety austin metro heading for camden town: the lock, the canal and the stables markets of which stalls dealt food, crafts, second-hand clothes, used furniture, antiques and bric-a-brac, that is, a pile of junk.

i loved treasure-hunting at the markets. i still keep some of the stuff i bought there like jugs, vases and candle holders, although most of them just went missing as i’ve moved from place to place crossing the oceans so many times in my past 2 decades. things i found at the markets as love at first sight but sadly i couldn’t afford to take any home were rocking horses. i was a little girl who fantasised about going on horseback in the fairytale forest while riding on a merry-go-round; it’d always been my childhood dream to have my own horse till i realised it was a dream that would never come true. so, i’ve always had my soft spot for them.

i never forget about the sunday that i ran into one with cute wicked eyes, sitting nervously on a shabby arm chair next to the heart brand signboard. as much as i wanted to take it with me, it was a bit big for an impulse buy. i hoped that someone with a heart of gold would have that rocking horse join his or her family…well, like always, i think i am taking a trip down memory lane right now. anyway, as years went past, many antique (junk?) stalls disappeared from the camden markets. but certainly, there was a good old time for good old rocking horses. where did all the rocking horses go? ---i’m still thinking of them, and wishing them a warm home.

accidental rothkos

these days, i'd easily waste time sitting in front of my laptop. i often find myself being carried away by the us presidential election news, even though it’s nothing to do with me. i’m just a curious onlooker. i just can’t miss the great show, which is staged only every 4 years and, to me, is far more absorbing and extreme than any reality tv show or soap opera. it’s too funny to be true. we japanese can never imagine things like that, let alone our election campaign running that way, you know. that extremist side of america (like “the jerry springer show”?) sometimes blows me away, while american people’s high-carolific enthusiasm is something I envy as a person who lives in a low-key society.

the scene, where american presidential candidates, obama and mccain sharing light-hearted jokes, even if they were all scripted by clever speech writers, at the al smith dinner, made me more envious. our political world has no room for wit or wits at all. i’m now sort of addicted to oliver burkeman’s campaign diary. his live blog (i didn’t read it live, though), reporting on the final debate between the two, almost got me off my chair when he was pausing to suppose joe the plumber might be related to joe le taxi. at any rate, i seem to be way too much preoccupied with newspaper articles on the net. maybe, i’m just trying to erase disheartening news about the global recession with some cheering, or at least, interesting news, no?


so, here’s good news to know: in london lots of exiting art shows are going on. rothko at tate modern, for instance. oh, i wish i was in london. i loved the former rothko room housed in the tate gallery (now tate britain). its installation was done by late david silvester, who had a genius of installing paintings and preferred daylight to artificial light for art exhibitions, which i totally agree with him. regarding the rothko room, however, using daylight was mark rothko’s own idea. he suggested how to hang his works when he gave them free to tate gallery. looking at the seagram murals there in dim lighting could've possibly been a chance for anyone to get what the sublime should mean, even in the austere, sombre, rather parsimonious mood.

david sylvester once wrote the difference between viewing a painting in daylight and artificial light. he described: the difference is like making love with or without a condom. i totally understand that. i did admire the legendary curator for his intuitive art critiques, too. as you think, if we knew a bit of background information provided by critics or curators before our gallery visits, artworks there would become something more than a view, more like an experience. rothko’s anecdote about his seagram murals (he didn’t want them to be hung in that swanky manhattan restaurant) is a perfect example. you might be amused by the fact that his death (he killed himself) coincided with the delivery of those paintings to the tate by chance.

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but, no sublime moment would be brought by words to you. after all, it’s a visual art. and physical experience is more important than preparation. that’s why i loved the way david sylvester hung all those paintings there. they were relocated to tate modern when it opened, and the room could never be the same, of course. although rothko is not among my most favourites, his work, at one point, could have changed my view on colours. i happened to find that beautiful colours didn’t have to be bright and striking. i can’t tell since exactly when, but i’ve been excessively attracted to subtle natural colours like sun-faded walls and rust on the surface of iron or steel quite a long time. i always find it divine.

so, whenever i’ve got a camera with me, wherever i come across (in london, madrid, palermo, granada, amsterdam … and even in richard serra’s sculptures) the shabby random beauty, i’d take photographs. in my mind, a rusty iron door and the image of rothko’s painting would be overlapping. i call them “accidental rothko”. because its beauty by born of coincidence resembles abstract expressionists’ work. as i’d trained myself to be a curator (during my london yba era) and been deeply involved with conceptual art, i still have a tendency to put artworks in some context. but when it comes to my accidental rothko, i can leave behind everything to appreciate its pure beauty. technically speaking, it’s not art, though.

i also found a good newspaper article about art on the net. it relates to a glitzy art fair, frieze (yes, i used to visit), being held now in london. the interviews with contemporary artists in the article lead readers to a discourse of the love-and-hate relationship between art and money. in the interview, gavin turk, who has participated in another art event, free art fair, running counter to frieze, questions “if a piece has no price, is it good value? if the work is free, is it art?” meanwhile, rothko, who eventually refused the lucrative commission to paint (he did, though) for the seagram, has been the 4th rank of last year’s 5 most expensive dead artists. i sometimes feel like leaving behind also this kind of money issue to see purely art.

anyway, i’m no longer in london. such art events seem to be a world away from me now. i miss my goldsmiths days of pondering “what is art?” day after day. but again, i could go and find my rothko anywhere. besides, i’m sorry to tell my friends who live in a cold climate, it’s sunny, it's still summer here. there are lots of art events going on in london but not nearly enough sunshine there, is it? when i had a late afternoon long walk in the park yesterday, it was still green, green, everywhere. naturally, some tree leaves, like cherry, are starting to fall or turn brown, yellow and burgundy, but only a little bit. as autumn approaches, rothko-colour-hunting must be a thing for me. i shouldn’t be sitting here too long.

mid september mid week art special

“global financial crisis” is the headline for almost all the newspapers around the world this week, as one of the big american money towers has collapsed and another been pillared. in this global-scale financial turmoil, who can read the future now? meanwhile, there is one more headline that has caught my eye this week. it’s been seen in european and american newspapers, which presents such a contrast to the darkest news of the world finacial markets.
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the news is also on money, though, it’s bright one. it is about damien. that damien "shark + tank + hirst". sotheby's has made a record sale for his artworks in london despite the crisis. it is a lucky thing for the yba giant that he’s still got big fans. rich big fans. but how and where do they have the money while everyone else is losing it?

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at goldsimiths college, damien hirst was taught by the professor, michael craig-martin who forced the world to call his artwork, which consists of a plain glass of water on a shelf, “an oak tree” in the same way as marcel duchamp did 9 decades ago. it might sound familiar to you if you reminded of the children’s story “the emperor’s new clothes”. i’m sure you’d feel ridiculed. artists are always dead serious (rather, seriously mischievous), however. damien hirst always loves to render that kind of extraordinary dark playfulness.

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like his artwork, his auction was never ordinary this time. that’s why this auction attracted the media this much. he is bona fide iconoclast and polemicist, you know. apparently, he dislikes the conventional system of “art dealing” via commercial galleries. when he was an art student, he organised a group show for his fellow ybas and himself at a derelict warehouse, so it must’ve been a piece of cake for him to organise the solo auction at sotheby’s with no help from his dealers.

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a few years later the yba caught the international notice, i studied fine art curating at goldsmiths. i learned the system how artists could find patrons such as collectors and museums, or governments. any artist needs money to produce an artwork. but the problem was, i found myself never having interest nor talent in selling art. i could not sell an artwork like a car. this is my old problem, really. i appeared to have no interest whatsoever in selling any commodities.

i just wonder if there were no funky galleries such as white cube and gagosian to show their work, where would collectors find it outside the museums? that would be very disappointing for gallery-goers, too.

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one art critic envisages damien’s attempt at sotheby’s would be one-off. i don’t know. surviving the relationship between artists, dealers and collectors can be applied to the financial market. we all look for something to materially satisfy us. after all, buying art is about possession (better to call it ownership?) with a touch of dream, fantasy, or whatever. wanting either art or money offers us a game.

yes, contemporary art is a game, as it were. so why not play? but i always preferred games with no direct money talk involved. i enjoyed the student shows at the end of the academic year that leading art dealers, curators and some renowned artists came along. i saw my postmodernism teacher, sarat maharaj, guiding the british pop art master, richard hamilton and even had a chance to exchange a few words with him. in september soon after i completed my ma curatorship course, i visited documenta x, the 10th international contemporary art event, which was inaugurated in 1955 and takes place on a vast scale in kassel for 100 days every 5 years.

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my train journey from frankfurt was a heaven on earth in comparison with the british railway service. every exhibition put on view was exhilarating. i liked documenta because it was less commercial, less glamorous than la biennale di venezia (i've never been to, though). i visited kassel again for the 11th five years later when i was basing back in london. by the way, you might have a neurotic image for contemporary art. but this art lovers’ playground cannot be suitable for fragile arty people. in fact quite the opposite, spectators must be fit enough to walk a long distance between venues.

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my life goes on without contemporary art in osaka. i hardly visit an art museum, let alone commercial galleries these days. it’s because, both mentally and physically, i am situated a bit too far from the bright lights now, living in a suburb where my kind of art game doesn’t exits at all. yet, i love browsing news about good ol’ ybas on the net. if there was no such art, this world would be too sterile, wouldn't it?

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